Royal Flush (19 page)

Then it hit me. "That's Charles," I said. "He kind of liked me, I think, and then my dress came undone, and—"

"Trust me," Carlos said, "he
still
likes you. No guy is going to like you any less after seeing you half-naked."

The Range Rover sped off, and Carlos and I stood outside, watching the rush hour traffic begin to snarl. I couldn't put my finger on it, but something struck me as odd about the whole series of events. I already knew that Jojia, who I hadn't thought about in days, was connected with Kent, and it was now equally clear that Kent was connected with both Jojia and her friend Charles.

The same kinds of thoughts must have been circling in Carlos's mind. "Why didn't you ask him about that Japanese girl?"

"You mean Jojia," I said. "I was trying to soft pedal it. If I asked him about her, he'd know I'd been tailing him, and then he'd really get his defenses up. This way, I just made it seem as if I had done a little poking around about his claim to be royalty, you know, nothing too intense."

Carlos raised an eyebrow, unimpressed. "So what are you thinking now? Is he off the hook?"

I shook my head. "I have no idea, honestly. The one thing I've started wondering about, though, is whether Kent is actually a con man, or whether
he's
the one being conned."

"How's that?"

"Well," I said, "the story about needing fifty grand for a lawsuit didn't originate with him. An old friend of his came up with the idea. And the friend's the one who would be getting the fifty grand in legal fees."

Carlos nodded. "I heard that part."

"The point is, maybe the friend was conning Kent. Kent seemed a little, well, daft, I think is how the British would put it. A little naïve. He didn't seem to know much about the lawsuit, really."

"Interesting," Carlos said. "So you think he might be a con man who's getting conned himself?"

I thought about it for a second, momentarily transfixed by an unshaven man stumbling his way in the direction of the Strip. "That's a possibility," I said, noncommittally. "I don't know if it matters. But the point is, I don't sense that Kent is some kind of mastermind con artist."

"So how does this all relate to the dead girl?" Carlos asked. He had a way of getting to the heart of the problem.

"God only knows."

Carlos and I parted company, and, as usual, I had just as many questions as answers. When I got home I made myself a cup of green tea and stood out on my balcony, forcing myself to think through every angle. It was an unpleasant, hard slog, the kind of thing the mind finds a million ways to distract itself from.

It was nice that Kent had agreed to meet with me, which suggested either that he was so clean he had nothing to hide or that he
did
have something to hide and wanted to see how much I knew about it. His bizarre friendship with Jojia still struck me as a little off, and now the guy she had used as a kind of lookout was involved too. But did they have anything to do with Melanie? It seemed like a stretch.

But it wouldn't be a stretch if Jojia and Kent were romantically close, I reasoned. In any three-way relationship the weakest link is doomed. Did Kent view Jojia as his Camilla Parker Bowles, his unachievable true love? And why did Jojia feel the need to have Charles stand watch outside their private VIP room at the nightclub? Stand watch for
what
? It was obvious that they were doing drugs in there, but that didn't seem all that unusual.

The beginnings of a theory began to crystallize in my mind. If Jojia and Kent and Charles were up to something illegal, and if Melanie had caught wind of it, she would have made herself a target, someone to be eliminated. The connections were all there: Kent linked Jojia and Charles to Melanie, and their connection to drugs fit right in to Melanie's overdose. The idea found a welcoming home in my psyche, because it meant Melanie's death would have had nothing to do with the fact that she'd hired
me
, a worry I'd entertained since the very beginning. It would also explain the strange vibe I had gotten from Jojia and her immense entourage of friends. If I could figure out what they were up to, I figured Detective Weakland might finally decide to open the case as a murder investigation.

It was Thursday night, which meant I was supposed to dance at my club. I didn't especially want to go, but I needed to keep up with it both for the money and for my expanding waistline. I had some time to kill before work, so I pulled up Jojia's Facebook page for the first time in several days. The first post on the top of the page was not from Jojia herself but from a girl named Janelle Petersen, and Janelle was not happy. The post was only a half hour old, and it read "
You b!tch, I know what u did
." Social media lends itself to such ambiguities, ambiguities I found annoying.

Nothing on Jojia's page hinted at her whereabouts for the evening. Of course, it was barely even dinnertime, and she and her friends didn't start partying until midnight, or even later. My computer refreshed her page automatically, something it does all the time without me noticing. But this time, the post from Janelle Petersen had disappeared. One minute it was there, the next minute it was gone. I got a chill imagining Jojia looking at the exact same page I was looking at, at the same time, and I could picture her seeing the angry post and quickly clicking the delete button before anyone saw it. Who, I wondered, was Janelle Petersen, and what had Jojia done to her?

I got myself ready for work and walked over to Cougar's a half hour early. One of my regulars gave me grief about not dancing as frequently as I used to, which I took as a good sign. I still had
it,
whatever
it
was. During my one o'clock break, I checked Jojia's Facebook page again. Still nothing. And nothing more from the mysterious Janelle Petersen either. I had noticed that Jojia was using hashtags in a lot of her posts, with most of her selfie photos being accompanied by some inane comment like
#keepingitreal
or
#2gorgeous
. One photo was even tagged
#admiturjealousofme
, setting a new bar for obnoxiousness. When it finally dawned on me to check her Twitter account, it proved to be a gold mine. The long and short of it was that her friends were meeting up at XS, the nightclub at the Wynn casino-resort. Jojia's party never stopped, apparently, and neither did the money.

After another hour on stage, I packed it in and got myself ready. I had planned ahead this time, bringing a sleek and much classier black cocktail dress along, and with the right shoes it made for a winning ensemble. Staring at myself in the mirror, I had to admit that the dress wasn't just good—it was
hot
.

Carlos was off that night, though, and he wasn't answering his phone, so I was going to have to fly solo. A cab dropped me in front of Wynn, and from there it was a long walk through the casino and into the promenade connecting Wynn to Encore, its sister hotel. About forty people were milling around in a poor attempt at a line, but I walked straight to the front. I forced myself to make a big smile and wink at the bouncer, and after an appreciative up-and-down review of my figure he nodded curtly and opened up the cord to let me in.

I had never been to XS before, so I cautiously skirted the perimeter as I tried to take it all in. The noise was hard to get past. The thumping rhythms seemed designed to distract rather than entertain, but I supposed the common goal of clubbers was to get whipped up into a kind of frenzy, fueled by alcohol and whatever else they needed, and the music had to match that mood. I didn't see any sign of Jojia on my first go-round. Unlike the Hakkasan nightclub, XS was more open, and in fact a good part of it extended to encircle the pool at Encore.

I ordered myself a gin martini at the bar, which appeared in a ridiculously fast time, and then made the rounds near the pool area. It was hard to believe that the club would allow so many young, drunk people to hang out near water, but I supposed there were insurance policies that covered just about anything. Off to the side of the pool, several cabanas, burgeoning with pretty young people, were lit from within by large faux candles that made the shadows dance on the walls. Tiny little waitresses pranced in and out, lugging full-size bottles of vodka and bourbon, the Las Vegas equivalent to Bavaria's beer fräuleins.

I leaned against a pillar and discreetly checked my phone to see if there were any updates on Jojia's social media sites. They were both quiet, which made me wonder whether she was still here. It was only 2:30, which wasn't very late for her crowd, so I wasn't ready to give up yet.

I decided to take a slow stroll past the cabanas, trying to peer inside without being too obvious.

A tap on my shoulder caused my heart to skip a beat. "Do I know you from somewhere?"

I turned around and looked up at a black face smiling down at me with perfect white teeth. His hazel eyes were so captivating that it was hard to remember to speak.

"Um, have we met?" I asked, feigning ignorance.

"My name's Charles. I think we've danced before. Or something." His voice had a conspiratorial tone to it, as though we'd shared more than just a dance. He
had
seen my left breast, but I wasn't sure he remembered that it had been
my
breast. They'd all been drinking a lot that night.

"Well, good to see you again," I said. I was embarrassed and caught off guard at the same time, so my only instinct was to flee. "I've got to go bring this drink to my friend," I said lamely, excusing myself. As I walked away, I could feel Charles's eyes watching my backside.

But where to flee? I had no friends here and nowhere to hang out in private, except for the bathroom, which is where I found myself within a minute. I was taking deep breaths and staring at myself in the mirror. I wasn't the only one. Four or five other girls pressed themselves together at the sinks, touching up their makeup and teasing out their hair, half-empty drink glasses resting on the counter in front of them.
Eww.
One of them kept leaning forward to see how her cleavage looked at different angles. She had platinum blonde hair and wore a stunning low-cut satin dress that showed off a giant emerald pendant. She caught me looking at her in the mirror and gave me a shrug, as if to say,
the things we women do
.

"Lookin' good," I said, truthfully. I wanted to tell her she looked like Cybill Shepherd, but I doubted she was old enough to know who that was.

She gave me the once-over. "Look who's talking. You're
smoking
. I hope I look like you when I'm your age."

I cringed at the backhanded compliment. It had started out so well—I was
smoking
—why did she have to add that
when I'm your age
part at the end? Even so, I was thankful for the temporary distraction. Seeing Charles wasn't
that
big of a deal, I told myself. Ideally, I would have been able to observe Jojia and Charles without their knowing I was here, but I reminded myself that Charles had no earthly idea that I was watching him, much less that I was a private detective. The fact that we had bumped into each other twice at nightclubs wasn't surprising at all, since it seemed as if the same crowd made the rounds at all the local stops. But now that I was outed, I had to find a way to be especially careful about them, particularly since they might be involved in something they didn't want anyone finding out about.

I picked up both my clutch and my cocktail off the vanity and followed Cybill Shepherd out the door, trying to shield myself behind clumps of people milling around. It wasn't the most efficient way to move around the club, but I managed to work my way back to the cabanas, where I saw Charles lingering outside. Nursing a clear beverage, he was chatting with a young woman who seemed to be having trouble standing upright. She was unabashedly hitting on him, with no success, and he appeared to be trying to shoo her away. Once again, it seemed as if Charles was manning a post rather than enjoying the club like everyone else. It wasn't just his dreadlocks that made him stand out, but his whole way of carrying himself, his whole purpose for being there seemed at odds with the party motif of the place.

I wanted to do a walk-by to see what was going on in the cabana, but it would have been too obvious with Checkpoint Charlie standing out front, especially since he seemed to have an eye for
me
in particular. I sidled up to a pillar to watch the scene. Apart from the drunk girl hitting on Charles, no one seemed to be coming or going from the cabana. As I leaned my head down to take another swig of my drink, I caught a sashay of satin parading toward me. The blonde from the bathroom mouthed a
hi
at me and smiled as she passed.

I turned to follow her. "Just a second," I said. She turned to face me, confused.

"I need a quick favor," I said. "You see that guy standing over there? The guy with the dreadlocks?"

She squinted so hard that I thought I could
hear
her face cracking. "Sorry," she said. "I really need glasses, but, you know."

I knew. Thick spectacles weren't "in" at the moment. Hadn't she ever heard of contacts? "Um, this is kind of weird, but I wonder if you could help me." I pulled out my phone and turned the camera on, setting it on video. Then I pinched my fingers on the screen to make it zoom in to the full amount.

"This is for a good cause, trust me. I just need to know what's going on inside that cabana."

She cocked her head to the side. "And you want me to take a video?"

It was crazy—I had to admit. But I reached inside my clutch and pulled out my private detective ID. "This is for real," I said. "Plus, it could even be fun."

The girl thought about it for a minute. "Um, no. You seem like a nice person, but…"

"I understand," I said. "It's a little crazy. How about if you go over and chat up that guy? He's pretty hot, you have to admit."

"Remember, I can't really see him that well. But if he's as good looking as you say he is, I'll go talk to him, sure. What's the worst that could happen?" She smiled at me and giggled. Apparently she was a little drunker than I'd thought.